Re: Campaigns

More opinions and thoughts on the campaign.

Re: Resource shipping.
I think that shipping of resources as "raw MCr" between systems is a 
good compromise. If you want commerce raiding or piracy _anywhere_ other

than point of origin or destination you're going to have to devise a 
campaign way to intercept fleets/convoys en route (Jump interdiction, 
fixed jumpgates/warp points, parsec-scale sensors + immediate jump 
reactions, etc.)

Re: Liberty ships
In war time you're going to need a way to mimic this. Something like 
deficit spending (which would be a big can of worms in a simple system).

Were they really more expensive, or just built more cheaply? (5 hull 
rows?, less armor (and therefore mass) for the same mix of systems?)

Re: Timescale
I think I like the 1-week/turn strategic scale _but_ it means that ship 
production really isn't going to be much of a factor unless you're in 
war-level production mode. If you start out with 10,000-20,000 pts of 
ships in your (entire) fleet, for example, adding a Destroyer every 12 
turns (even 1 cruiser every turn during war production) ain't going to 
do much unless you play very quickly. When the wars really get hot 
attrition will far far outstrip production. Shipping raids and pirace 
also make more sense in this scale.

If you go for the 1-week timescale you can almost abstract 
production/construction out of the game and play with fixed startup 
forces, adding a few "re-enforcements" every few turns (the category 
would represent newly constructed, refitted, un-mothballed ships pressed

into service, and would be a factor of starting strength, not current 
attrition state.)

If you really want production/construction to be a game factor, I think 
you need the quarterly or even yearly turn.

Re: Advances
I enjoy tech advances in campaign systems. If you go for the longer 
timescale, a tech tree (and therefore starting tech level) could be 
defined. It could be as simple as a % modifier for costs of certain 
systems (e.g. Main drive gets 10% cheaper). Could be new tech (Humans 
reverse engineer KV drives), or any number of other things (UN 
introduces Heavy P-torps).  Some of the best martial dramas in	B5, for 
example where when the white star _fleet_ showed up for the first time, 
and when the Alliance had to take on the Shadow-tech augmented 
Earthforce.

Re: Tricks
Speaking of SF TV and movies (not real wars) a great deal of the drama 
of space combat there centers around getting the unexpected edge (esp 
since fights are rarely even - the good guys are often outmatched by the

bad).  In one-off scenarios, there's really no place for this, but in a 
larger campaign, it'd be nice for some unexpected gambit every now and 
then (could be abstracted to legendary officers as in that other game 
system , or something like Karma points).